Quote

Letting go of our suffering is the hardest work we will ever do. It is also the most fruitful. To heal means to meet ourselves in a new way -- in the newness of each moment where all is possible and nothing is limited to the old.

Stephen Levine

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Stephen Levine
Age: 78 †
Born: 1937
Born: July 17
Died: 2016
Died: January 17
Poet
Screenwriter
the United States of America
Stephan Levine
Work
Suffering
Newness
Way
Moment
Fruitful
Means
Letting
Moments
Limited
Also
Heal
Ever
Hardest
Nothing
Meet
Mean
Possible

More quotes by Stephen Levine

Image
Letting the last breath come. Letting the last breath go. Dissolving, dissolving into vast space, the light body released from its heavier form. A sense of connectedness with all that is, all sense of separation dissolved in the vastness of being. Each breath melting into space as though it were the last.
Stephen Levine
Image
Gratitude is the state of mind of thankfulness. As it is cultivated, we experience an increase in our sympathetic joy, our happiness at another's happiness. Just as in the cultivation of compassion, we may feel the pain of others, so we may begin to feel their joy as well. And it doesn't stop there.
Stephen Levine
Image
How soon will we accept this opportunity to be fully alive before we die? (88)
Stephen Levine
Image
We've all been should upon enough.
Stephen Levine
Image
Buddha left a road map, Jesus left a road map, Krishna left a road map, Rand McNally left a road map. But you still have to travel the road yourself
Stephen Levine
Image
The mind creates the abyss. The heart crosses over it. Love is the bridge.
Stephen Levine
Image
If you can find the God inside yourself, you can find the God inside everybody.
Stephen Levine
Image
Hell is not fire and brimstone, not a place where you are punished for lying or cheating or stealing. Hell is wanting to be something and somewhere different from where you are.
Stephen Levine
Image
The demons aren't the noise. They are our aversion to the noise...when you can accept discomfort, doing so allows a balance of mind. That surrender, that letting go of wanting anything to be other than it is right in the moment, is what frees us from hell.
Stephen Levine
Image
Nothing is more natural than grief, no emotion more common to our daily experience. It's an innate response to loss in a world where everything is impermanent.
Stephen Levine
Image
We are so numb we don't even know what a direct experience is. We have an experience, then we think about it and we think the thinking about it is the experience.
Stephen Levine
Image
You can call it wisdom, or sanity, or health, or enlightenment. I use the word God as a short-cut. I am comfortable with the word God because I don't have the foggiest idea of what it means.
Stephen Levine
Image
Safety is the most unsafe spiritual path you can take. Safety keeps you numb and dead. People are caught by surprise when it is time to die. They have allowed themselves to live so little.
Stephen Levine
Image
Understanding is the ultimate seduction of the mind. Go to the truth beyond the mind.
Stephen Levine
Image
Grief can have a quality of profound healing because we are forced to a depth of feeling that is usually below the threshold of awareness.
Stephen Levine
Image
[D]etachment means letting go and nonattachment means simply letting be. (95)
Stephen Levine
Image
Death is perfectly safe. (55)
Stephen Levine
Image
If you want the other person more than anything else in the world, you're in major trouble and the relationship is a wobbly pivot. It's different if the thing you want most in the world is truth, and your partner is the person you want most in the world.
Stephen Levine
Image
Much thought has at its root a dissatisfaction with what is. Wanting is the urge for the next moment to contain what this moment does not. When there is wanting in the mind, that moment feels incomplete. Wanting is seeing elsewhere. Completeness is being right here.
Stephen Levine
Image
Relate to the fear, not just from it. (50)
Stephen Levine